My Hive Just Swarmed ~

[Perry]

Perhaps we should retitle this.... Confession of a Bad Beekeeper*.   Good beekeeper of course DO NOT ALLOW their bees to swarm.... there are of course none of these on this forum.

*not certain if it is still out there in the blogsphere but there was a Canadian who wrote a very funny piece using this same title.

http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Beekeeping-Ron-Miksha/dp/1412006279#reader_1412006279

[mamapoppybee]

jen are those bees your back up dancers? cuz blue wants yal to shake shake shake

[blueblood]

http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Beekeeping-Ron-Miksha/dp/1412006279#reader_1412006279
[/quote]

I am going to try to find that book but not for the price on amazon, wow! That is hard cover with dust jacket price.

[LazyBkpr]

  barry
that's baffling why you would put it on top, you'd want her to go down in between the frames what you wouldn't want her to do is go down through the top and out the bottom lol

 Queen excluder on top is to SEE queen/catch queen etc.  She wanted to SEE the queen so I suggested shaking the bees down through an excluder if they could not find her.
   The excluder on the bottom is to keep her from absconding. the other bees may fly out, but she wont follow so they will all come back..

[Papakeith]

quite a read!  Great Job!

[barry42001]

ah ok I actually thought of that but was concerned about the fact that the Queens already in a flying mood.

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[Jen]

tec- ""Perhaps we should retitle this.... Confession of a Bad Beekeeper*.   Good beekeeper of course DO NOT ALLOW their bees to swarm.... there are of course none of these on this forum""

Now tec! if I didn't enjoy your presence and great knowledge on this forum so much, I would just have to take this personal    the factors in my story are this:

1) We, here in upper CA are having unseasonably warm weather, usually we have snow and slush just like many of the others on this forum. I started feeding a month ago, and that really bulked up the hive sooner than I was ready.

2) Just two days ago, I was in the hive, 2 deeps, with a full inspection. I found that the upper box was brood bound and had 6 queen cells, and the bottom box was just half if not less the brood as the top box, with plenty of egg laying space for the queen. So! To prevent a swarm... I swapped a bunch of frames to give balance and opportunity to give them more room, and to buy me a couple of days to prepare for a split.

But Alas! the bees were already in swarm mode and beat me to the punch. Fortunately, I stepped into the backyard when the swarm was first starting. I like to believe that the bees were trying to tell me to "get my butt in gear girl! It's going to be a very busy day!"

Because I spent the entire winter reading on this forum, excellerating my posts to over 1,000, I had enough info to act on instinct and not stand in the backyard scratching my head wondering what to do with a swarm... like last year.

Thanks everyone for hanging tight with me yesterday! We all saved the bees and the day! I am most Grateful ~hugs~ 

[barry42001]

I'm not sure but I think Tec, vitamin firing a shot across the bow of my ship lol. I advocate that  swarms and largely be avoided, not 100 percent but to my way of thinking nearly so. for the backyard beekeeper I believe it's almost a hundred percent, for the commercial beekeeper because of the sheer numbers of hives that has to go through it becomes much more problematic. ultimately at the end of the day, the individual beekeeper has to decide why they're keeping bees. are you raising it honey, if so then swarming is a definite no-no.
if you intend to increase the number of colonies, and you're lucky enough to be there when the swarm issues, then you're good to go, if not you can spend your off time chasing swarms all over the county. I just don't believe it makes any sense to allow the bees do that, when it is largely controllable. I have cited my beliefs several times I won't do so again as to what I do to prevent swarming and I have a chance to practice it again down here in Florida.

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[apisbees]

Jen and others, when and when not to supplement feed? I read on posts when ones are all excited about feeding supplements to their bees but unless you have a specific need for the bees at a certain time I recommend that you don't. It can take less than 6 weeks for the bees to go from a hive with no brood to over crowding and swarming.
You have to go thru the hive either today or to morrow and cull swarm cells, there is a good chance that the hive will issue cast swarms if not controlled. It would be a good idea to pull a frame of brood with a cell and raise another queen in a nuc. The success of queen being raised is not 100% so if something happens you will have a backup to use. Also thy to determine why they decided to swarm. some of the reasons could be that you where feeding to much and crowded the laying ares in the brood chambers. You pulled frames with drawn combs and replaced them with foundation  and conditions were not favorable for the bees to produce beeswax and so these frames of foundation limited the brood area. I would suspect a combination of both. The bees like at to be warm when building wax, a high population of young bees between 10 to 16 days old. Old bees forage and store honey. The syrup being fed was being stored in the drawn comb and not being used to readily build comb.
Congratulations on catching your first swarm of the season.

[Jen]

Hi DL- ""When we're in swarm season all the trees are leafed out, I found that interesting of your pictures, all the trees are still bare""

Upper Calif, we are having an unseasonably warm early spring, we like so many on this forum are usually dealing with snow and slush ~  Hence the early swarm ~

[Jen]

G3- ""This is the rig I was trying to explain, a pic is worth a thousand words.""

Great idea! Sure could have used this yesterday    Gonna make one! Thanks

[Jen]

Barry ""my assumption is they left with the old queen, meaning he doesn't need to go out for another mating flight, and ensure she stays in the hive.""

Yes she is with the swarm in the new box, saw her last night 

[Jen]

Suggestions were made to put an excluder on the bottom for said reasons, or put an excluder on the top of the box so that we could make sure she was with the swarm and not left out on the tree. Moving upward it would be bottom board, excluder, brood deep, excluder, two mediums or another deep. This way when shaking the bees into the top box, the bees would go thru the top excluder leaving the queen unable to do so. This way we can make sure the queen is with the swarm. Then when all the bees are down below, we just move the excluder a bit and coax the queen to go into the lower box, then remove the excluder completely. Now all is accomplished. That would be the best scenario.

[Jen]

Ken ""I think Jen you had a day like I had Saturday, though you added some fun to it. HaHa.""

Thanks Ken! It felt like a comedy of errors in the beginning, but it pulled together nicely by the end of the day, or night I should say, we were working on it until 11pm ~ long day but fun 

[jb63]

So do you have any queens lift in the parent colony?Just curious.

[Jen]

Hi Jb- Presently there are 2. There were 6. I saw your post about making a nuc and this would be an opportune time, however, I'm out of equipment, except mediums. No deeps, no nucs. And Frankly it was enough to just get this swarm under wraps. My main concern was to prevent more swarming 

[ablanton]

I had a good idea where they might land because the three swarms that left last year landed in the same place. In this cedar tree just over our backyard fence.

I don't know what it is about cedar trees, but my bees love them too.  I had two, and both were could swarm attractors last year.  Sadly, I lost one of them in the ice storm last weekend.

I had one swarm go about 25 feet up one of the cedars last year.  My ladder wouldn't reach.  Two of my buddies climbed the inside of the tree while I went up the ladder as far as I could on the outside of the tree.  They cut the branch and pitched it down.  I caught it in a box.  It was the second swarm from a hive and had a virgin queen.  They took off to another branch.  They kept jumping from branch to branch, and they kept cutting branch after branch.  By the time we finally got them for good, that tree was gapped up pretty bad!   My wife said, "Now you've ruined the tree and you'll have to cut it down!"   I said, "No way!  This tree is my swarm catcher!

It wasn't exactly safe and I'm sure it was a funniest videos waiting to happen (if i'd had a camera), but nobody got hurt.  My wife calls me "Clark Griswold", now.   

[Jen]

ablanton- I hear ya on that one! and cedars are soft slippery trees. After I cut a few smaller branches of bees and had them in the plastic bin, I couldn't reach the rest, so I hung out on the forum for about 1/2 hour or so getting ideas from others. When I went back the swarm ball had slid/oozed down the branches about a foot and I was able to reach a safe place to cut without the ladder and I going over the bank. Good Lord ~

Oh! and by the way, this is the fourth swarm that has lit on this cedar behind our house. Cedar's Rock!